bing pixel
  1. Home
  2. Category: Relationship

Professor Tim Pippert Interviewed About Diversity Marketing in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted on

Tim Pippert, Augsburg’s Joel Torstenson endowed professor of sociology, was recently interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education about how some colleges attempt to create the appearance of a more diverse student body than they actually have. The article cited a paper in which Pippert and his co-authors analyzed more than 10,000 photographs from the admissions brochures of 165 four-year colleges. The 2013 study found that Black students were overrepresented in admissions brochures by nearly twice their actual numbers on campuses.

One implication of the findings, Pippert said, is that over-representing minorities in marketing materials could hurt students who choose to attend colleges expecting more diversity than actually exists.

Read the full article in the Race on Campus newsletter.

Najeeba Syeed Appointed Augsburg University’s Inaugural El-Hibri Endowed Chair and Interfaith Director

Posted on

Headshot of Najeeba Syeed. Najeeba is wearing a yellow headscarf and blue spiral earrings.Augsburg University is pleased to announce that Najeeba Syeed has been appointed as the inaugural El-Hibri endowed chair and executive director of Interfaith at Augsburg, effective on August 1, 2022. In this role, she will serve as a national ambassador for the interfaith movement and will partner with campus leaders as a change agent for interreligious learning and living. She also will serve as the faculty advisor for Augsburg’s Interfaith Scholars.

“Professor Syeed is an experienced mediator, a publicly-engaged scholar, a passionate educator, and a seasoned organizational leader,” said Augsburg President Paul C. Pribbenow. “This appointment represents a crucial and exciting step forward in our commitment to enhancing interfaith leadership on campus and nationally.”

For more than two decades, Syeed has been a professor and expert practitioner in the fields of conflict resolution, mediation, and interfaith studies. An award-winning educator, she has taught extensively on interreligious education and published articles on faith and community-based conflict resolution, restorative justice, and interfaith just peacemaking. She previously served for 10 years as an associate professor at the Claremont School of Theology. She also held faculty positions at Starr King School for the Ministry and Chicago Theological Seminary, where she was most recently associate professor of Muslim and interreligious studies. She has served as the co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion and Politics Section and was a member of the Academy’s Religion, Social Conflict, and Peace Section.

Syeed also brings significant executive experience in organizations focused on conflict resolution in community, higher education, and government settings, including the Western Justice Center Foundation and the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center. In 2021, she served as chief of staff to Nithya Raman, the first Asian American woman elected to the Los Angeles city council. She holds a law degree from the Indiana University School of Law and a bachelor of science degree from Guilford College.

“I am honored to serve as the inaugural El-Hibri Chair and Executive Director of Interfaith at Augsburg. This is a unique opportunity to extend and amplify Augsburg’s remarkable interfaith work and to honor the generous and visionary commitment of the El-Hibri family, “ said Syeed.

“My life’s work combines a commitment to scholarship, teaching, and community organizing,” she added.  “Listen, learn, partner, and co-create is the process I utilize to lead and build with fellow faculty, administrators, students, community leaders, and stakeholders from around the globe.”

Interfaith engagement is a core aspect of Augsburg’s academic mission and reflects the religious and secular diversity of the campus and surrounding community. Interfaith at Augsburg: An Institute to Promote Interfaith Learning and Leadership was established in 2019 to further the belief that religious diversity can be a constructive force serving the common good. In 2021, a significant gift from Fuad and Nancy El-Hibri allowed for the creation of the El-Hibri endowed chair and executive directorship for the institute.

Syeed’s appointment helps to fulfill one of the goals of Augsburg150, the university’s sesquicentennial strategic plan, to advance the public purposes of an Augsburg education by enhancing interfaith leadership on campus and throughout the nation. Building on the strong foundation established by Bishop Mark S. Hanson, founding director, she will lead a strategic planning process that strengthens, integrates, and extends the Interfaith Institute’s work on campus and beyond.

Spotlight on Green Chemistry at Augsburg

Posted on

An organic chemist with a focus on systems-level thinking, Associate Professor Michael Wentzel is out to make science more sustainable.

“Chemistry doesn’t have to be the solution to the problems it created—it could just not create them,” he says in the June 2022 cover story in Private University Products and News Magazine.

Read the full profile to learn more about Wentzel’s path from his family’s Iowa hardware store to chairing Augsburg’s chemistry department, how green chemistry is “benign by design,” and why he’s on a mission to improve science communication.

Augsburg Professor Eric Buffalohead Discusses Native Americans in Film With ICT

Posted on

In a recent newscast, ICT (formerly Indian Country Today) interviewed Augsburg University Associate Professor Eric Buffalohead about persistent stereotypes of Native Americans in film. Buffalohead chairs the Department of American Indian, First Nations, and Indigenous Studies and is the co-editor, with Professor Elise Marubbio, of the book “Native Americans on Film: Conversations, Teaching, and Theory.”

“I’ve been teaching “American Indian in the Cinema” for going on 30 years, and people have asked me, what’s the solution to some of these problems?” said Buffalohead. “And it’s contemporary representations. The big theme that you walk away from my course with is that most of our images are stuck in time, meaning that they’re somewhere in the past. People don’t see us as contemporary—they see us as these images in the old West and very much stereotypes of plains or southwest Indians. They don’t see the real diversity of Indigenous people in the Americas.”

The conversation with anchor Aliyah Chavez also touched on expanding representations in television through shows like “Rutherford Falls” and “Reservation Dogs,” translation of major films into the Navajo and Comanche languages, and Professor Marubbio’s work on representations of Native women in film. Find the full interview in the ICT newscast archive (segment begins at 6:15).

Augsburg Faculty Awarded Fulbrights in Ireland and Slovenia

Posted on
George Dierberger headshot
George Dierberger
Joseph Erickson Headshot
Joseph Erickson

Augsburg faculty members George Dierberger and Joseph Erickson have been named Fulbright Scholars for the 2022–23 academic year. Each year, the Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board select roughly 800 U.S. citizens to receive the Fulbright Scholar award for international travel, study, and teaching.

A competitive Fulbright application requires strong academic merit, demonstrated leadership potential, and a good match between an applicant’s strengths and a host institution’s needs. But for both of Augsburg’s faculty recipients, there’s a personal connection that makes receiving the Fulbright particularly rewarding this year.

Dierberger, an associate professor of business administration who also directs Augsburg’s MBA program, is mindful of family history as he prepares to spend three months in residence at the Atlantic Technological University in Letterkenny, County Donegal, Ireland. While this will be his first trip to Ireland, his great-great-grandfather hailed from County Cork. During the fall semester, Dierberger will develop case studies, lecture on innovation, help to build out a curricular focus on entrepreneurship, and partner with the Letterkenny business community to create an advisory council and internship opportunities.

Erickson, a professor of education and a psychologist by training, first visited Slovenia in 1994 through connections made by former Augsburg colleague Magda Paleczny-Zapp. Several of the graduate students tasked with assisting the Erickson family during that trip are now faculty themselves—including a department chair at the University of Ljubljana. Erickson will spend the spring collaborating with a team in Ljubljana to adapt a tool used to measure racial attitudes in the U.S. for the Slovenian context. He and his colleagues will shape the new scale around nationalism, a key issue for a society at the crossroads of western and eastern Europe and a way station for refugee migration.

In addition to these faculty awards, Augsburg was recently named a top producer of Fulbright students among U.S master’s institutions, with three students receiving scholarships to teach English abroad in 2021–22.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. For over 75 years, the program has provided more than 400,000 participants with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to challenges facing our communities and our world. ​​Fulbright alumni include 61 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, and 40 who have served as a head of state or government. Learn more about the Fulbright Program here.

Congratulations to Auggies Named to the 2022 Spring Semester Dean’s List

Posted on

University SealMore than 850 Augsburg University undergraduate students were named to the 2022 Spring Semester Dean’s List. The Augsburg University Dean’s List recognizes those full-time students who have achieved a grade point average of 3.50 or higher and those part-time students who have achieved a grade point average of 3.75 or higher in a given term.

View the 2022 Spring Semester Dean’s List.

Students who wish to notify their hometown newspapers of their achievement can do so at their discretion using a news announcement template.

“People Do Their Own Healing”: Minnesota Women’s Press Features Prof. Melissa Hensley

Posted on

The Minnesota Women’s Press recently featured an editorial by Melissa Hensley, associate professor of social work, on the value of peer support to reduce stigma in social service settings. The essay was part of a larger issue dedicated to stigma and addiction.

Hensley, who also serves as field director for Augsburg’s bachelor of social work program, spent many years as a provider of services to adults with serious and persistent mental illness in a residential setting.

“Peer supporters, who use their own experiences with addiction or mental health to help guide others, are an example of person-centered care … [They] fill gaps in traditional mental health services by providing essential knowledge about the recovery process, such as how to cope with symptoms, develop healthy relationships, and balance employment,” she writes.

“Social workers like myself need to understand that our role is not to “fix what is wrong.” People do their own healing, and our job is to offer tools and resources.”

Read the full piece in the Minnesota Women’s Press.

NPR Features Alumna’s Work to Cool Urban Heat Island

Posted on

María Belén Power ’07 was recently featured in a WBUR story that also aired on All Things Considered from National Public Radio. Belén Power is associate executive director at GreenRoots in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The environmental justice organization is collaborating with the city and Boston University to pilot a host of cooling strategies on a densely populated Chelsea block, from planting trees to replacing asphalt with lighter-colored material.

In addition to improving local residents’ well-being, the Cool Block project serves as a template for other cities as climate change brings longer, hotter summers, increasing health risks in urban heat islands.

“Some days we feel like—what?—are we really having an impact? Like, is this really going to prevent the climate crisis?” Belén Power told WBUR’s Martha Bebinger. “And then I think, ‘It’s no longer about preventing it. It’s about protecting the most vulnerable communities.’”

Learn more about the Cool Block project from WBUR or listen to the full story from NPR.

Alyssa Parkhurst ’23 Named 2022 Udall Scholar

Posted on

Alyssa ParkhurstAlyssa Parkhurst, a senior majoring in environmental studies and American Indian studies, has been named a 2022 Udall Scholar. Only 55 students across the United States are selected each year, and Parkhurst is only the second Auggie ever to have received this scholarship.

As a Udall Tribal Public Policy Scholar, Parkhurst will receive $7,000 and spend five days in Tucson, Arizona, at Scholar Orientation, where she will extend her professional network, meet other scholars and alumni, and learn new skills.

The Udall Foundation awards scholarships to college sophomores and juniors for leadership, public service, and commitment to issues related to Native American nations or to the environment.

Parkhurst is an Act Six Scholar, summer intern and farmer at Dream of Wild Health, environmental stewardship coordinator at Augsburg, oshkaabewis (ceremonial helper) to her Elder, Noodinesiikwe, and an old-style jingle dress dancer and educator. Congratulations, Alyssa!

Learn more about the 2022 Udall Scholars.

Augsburg University Announces $125 Million Comprehensive Campaign

Posted on

White text on maroon background reads "Great Returns," with smaller orange text beneath that reads, "We're All In"Augsburg University leaders today announced the public phase of Great Returns: We’re All In, a comprehensive campaign to raise $125 million in endowment and core mission support. With commitments of more than $105 million received to date, it is already the university’s largest-ever campaign. A public launch event will take place on Friday, May 6, at 4:30 p.m. at the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion on Augsburg’s campus.

Rooted in Augsburg’s current strategic plan and following Augsburg’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2019, Great Returns seeks to provide long-term stability as the university looks ahead to the next 150 years. Specific campaign priorities include growing Augsburg’s endowment, including endowed scholarships and professorships; drawing on unrestricted community support for operating activities and athletics in the wake of the pandemic; and investing in campus improvements like the renovation to the athletic training center and locker rooms in Si Melby Hall.

“Donors who care deeply about our mission have made the initial commitments that set the pace for the broader campaign,” said campaign co-chair and Regent Emeritus Paul Mueller ’84, MD. “Through endowed funds, we can invest in students and faculty and produce great returns for many generations to come. A gift to an Augsburg endowed fund for scholarships can help ensure that an Augsburg education is affordable in perpetuity.” 

In recent years, Augsburg has become one of the most diverse private institutions in the Midwest. Fifty-eight percent of traditional undergraduate students are students of color, and half are the first in their families to attend college. More than 97% of Augsburg undergraduates receive financial aid. Great Returns donors have made 111 gifts to endowed scholarships to date, out of a campaign goal of 150 such gifts, along with five new endowed professorships.   

“Our vision is to be a new kind of urban, student-centered university,” said Augsburg President Paul C. Pribbenow. “The hardships of the past few years, and the challenges facing higher education as a result, make our work to educate students as stewards of an inclusive democracy all the more critical. We are profoundly grateful to the supporters who invest in making this vision a reality.”

About Augsburg

Augsburg University offers more than 50 undergraduate majors and 11 graduate degrees to approximately 3,200 students of diverse backgrounds at its campus in the vibrant center of the Twin Cities and nearby Rochester, Minnesota, location. Augsburg educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. An Augsburg education is defined by excellence in the liberal arts and professional studies, guided by the faith and values of the Lutheran church, and shaped by its urban and global settings.

Learn more at Augsburg.edu/greatreturns.